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I've always been a fan of Bendis on the Avengers. I think his plotting is very interesting and he has had some great ideas. That said one of the issues I"ve always had is his ability to juggle the cast in these team books. While moving the story forward it seemed like he lost a bit of the characterization for the characters, and as a result they don't seem important to the team dynamic. I think since the relaunch of this title though that he has really improved in that regards. In this issue we get to see some great moments from pretty much every character on panel. Spidey and Noh Varr discussing how jokes work, Wolverine and Charles bantering back and forth, Steve and Iron Man discussing the moral implications of the illuminati. All of it was really well handled in my opinion.

The story itself moved forward at an appropriate rate. No big surprises here right now, they are collecting the infinity gems. The star of the issue is the dialouge and characterization. They do tease what will hopefully be a stellar fight at the end though.

The art in this is a mixed bag. Romita Jr. may be my favorite artist of all time, but his superhero work ever since WWH has not been his best. The art here is servicable and still better than a lot of the other crap we see, but not up to his usual standards. Compare the art in this book to Kick Ass 2 and you will see he is capable of much better.

There's a scene on a quinjet that sums up this comic pretty well. Fairly unfunny banter between too many characters drawn poorly on the way to fight a fairly unthreatening threat. Bendis is capable of writing some fantastic comics, and even some not-terrible Avengers comics but this was not one of them. Too many characters feature here for any of them to get a strong presence on the page and the only one of them with a distinct voice was Namor, whose opening narration featured some very clumsy hyperbole and a baffling plot choice. If no-one would think to look there, why bother taking the gem away? Oh and did Romita's art live up to his own standard?

No-one involved in this comic is a bad creator, but somehow together they are far less than the sum of their parts. That said, the bits with Falcon, Black Widow and Moon Knight? They were great. If only they weren't part of a different comic. One with maybe a scrap of merit.

As discussed a bit last week, I'm preparing to go through some personal shit so I may be spotty for the next few months and perhaps even disappear after that. I will participate when I can and tell you when I can't and even let you know when I'm going to disappear.

I'm planning on participating this week.

doombug wrote:You really are the george carlin of the outhouse. that's fucking hilarious.

doombug wrote:and yeah, Yoni called it.

I feel like a condemned building with a brand new flag pole.- Les Paul

I've liked this series overall, but this entire issue was a hurried, rushed mess on all parts. It appears the even The Great One can miss the mark at times.

Art looked inconsistent throughout the book with fluctuating quality, the story just jumped from one scene to the next so jarringly that following it was pretty frantic...overall it just seemed like filler to help bring the 3 other Infinity Gems into play after 4 issues of (pretty good) build-up.

As much as I hate to give it a mark this low given how much I liked the other parts of this story, this is by far one of the weakest books I've read from Bendis ever.